Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Today we set up our nucs at an undisclosed location in Anacostia, which is an under-served community in DC. The location of this new apiary is far from human interaction and surrounded by plenty of forest, perfect for nursing nucs.

We will populate these babies April 3. These are my homemade variety that I have discussed here: They each hold five frames plus a 1-gallon feeder to get them is shape for hive-population in late spring.

The total cost for each nuc is about $23 (with paint). We hope to amortize this cost over 3 seasons of bees.

After setting these hives we went to visit our friend Charles from Anacostia. Charles is much smarter than me in that he wears appropriate garb:

That said, he has two hives, one hot and one friendly.

Here is the friendly one:

And here is the bitchy one:

And these fuckers pinged me 35 feet away from their colony. ouch. But here was Charles' aftermath:

Note the swollen left (his left) eye. Lucky he has a doctor for a girlfriend, because his eye was swollen shut before he was handled by a medical professional.